Michael Jackson is dead.

An event so momental that people were texting me in the early hours of the morning to let me know.  I thought there was some sort of emergency as the phone beeped, but it was texts telling me about the death of one man.

I turned on the radio news this morning and it was every story.  I clicked on the online Telegraph newspaper to scan the news as I do every morning and it is all 5 of the top 5 stories of the day.  Apparently Facebook (which I am not on) and Twitter (which I am on infrequently) are jammed with the news.  9 out of 10 searches on google this morning are about Michael Jackson.

Remarkable.  Someone who was clearly a talented and gifted individual has died – and yes they have died before their time, and the world comes to a stand still.  However, there are people dying every day. 

150000 people die every day on average.  People who most of whom have never known Christ, have never responded to the gospel, believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and had their sins forgiven and their nature transformed.

Think about that – why is our priority as a planet an entertainer?  Why is that the top news story is the death of one man when a more important issue is perhaps the number of children aborted on our planet today (115000 on average)?

I know Michael Jackson is a father, and my heart goes out to his three children.  But many fathers will be dying today and it won’t be the news story of the year.

Why does something like this hit people hard?  Why does it get the sort of coverage it does?  It is because the human race has not yet dealt with the one undeniable fact: all people die.  Everyone dies.  No matter how talented, how famous, no matter how renowned – everyone dies.

Death is not normal: humanity was not created to die.  It was created to live forever in paradise with God.  Adam and Eve would have done that if they had not sinned against God and rebelled against His provision and goodness and broke the one command He gave them. 

The good news is that there  is an antidote to death: Jesus Christ died our death so we can enjoy His eternal life.  Jesus Christ paid the price for your sin and my sin, so that if we believe in His redemptive work on the cross, then we can receive eternal life now on earth, and enjoy the joy of knowing Him not just now but forever.

If you want to know if you need a Saviour, or if you think you are a good person: click here.